Parenting is boring? Get a life.

August 21st, 2006

Rebecca Eckler is as polite and charming in person as her public persona is outrageously superficial and vacuous. A couple of pleasant meetings at political and quasi-political events confirms the former, her blog, etc., the latter. In fact, it is a little difficult to imagine the “F-word” emanating so frequently, as it does on her blog, from such a compact, inoffensive-looking frame. But in crafting a persona as “one of Canada’s most talked about newspaper columnists”, some eggs must be broken.

Her latest missive for the Globe and Mail (try the link, or if that fails, Google “motherhood is boring eckler”), as the headline describes it, shares mommy’s “dirty secret” that “Motherhood is boring”. Well, OK. From the perspective of the hyper-stimulated Gen-X/Next bimbette, looking for the Next Thing something that actually requires commitment might really put you out. To her credit, Eckler asks the rhetorical question whether these mothers who find child-rearing such a yawner are “simply spoiled? Or selfish?” That said, she somehow manages to answer in the negative.

Perhaps the real question to ask is why anyone would, or should expect life, or large parts of it like parenthood, to be eternally gratifying or stimulating. What comes from having such expectations? Well, read the article. Or better yet, read this.

For those who want the party to go on forever, the trip into the diaper and drool world may not be what you’re looking for; and you may want to pull your genes from the pool. For those who find parenthood by turns maddening and exhilarating – because it is life, after all – steady on.

If you’re comfy watching old Bugs Bunny cartoons and playing Monopoly or Trouble, then childrearing may be the most natural thing for you. If you can enjoy unravelling the mysteries of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, find joy in A Child’s Garden of Verses or be humbled by a child’s simple, genuine faith; then a world is open to you. And the congenitally “bored” may not enter.

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